


Fear Subsiding

by anarchoamory (aboxofbees)



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: I may have got overexcited with the descriptive language, M/M, the summary makes it sound angsty but it ends nicely i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 07:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1973310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aboxofbees/pseuds/anarchoamory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Layers of terror and need have been all Kieren has known in his second life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear Subsiding

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this was meant to be, but I had feels and needed to write a thing. Previously posted on tumblr~

Since wakening in the torrid darkness of his, supposedly, final resting place, Kieren’s life had been one of terror and need; layers of incessant sensation pulling him in directions over which he had an unbearable lack of control.   
The primal drive to hunt and catch prey; the low thrum in the base of his brain; a throbbing need to feed that he could feel unconsciously behind his eyes and under his tongue, pressing at him and overcoming the vestiges of humanity threaded through the colour of his eyes, now lost, and the naïve flush of his cheeks, now dead.   
As his fingers would rip at flesh that seemed to hold a long past familiarity, tremors of silvery fear would spark through the monochrome vision of essential need that clouded his comprehension of the world. Fear of a starvation that would never occur, fear of predators that didn’t exist; the mental processes of a being fighting to be alive.

When he was contained and moved to the Norfolk treatment centre, consciousness ebbed slowly back into his mind, washing away the primitive needs of the rabid he was, and replacing them with the crushing fear of a human trying to cope with the reality of no longer being human. When he looked in the mirror, an unfamiliar face looked back at him; his pallid complexion and bleached eyes serving only to remind him of the monstrosities that he dreamt in the dark of night.   
Now his overriding need was to feel like a human being again; not a farce that had to be painted into an illusion of humanity. To feel the warmth of family smiling at him.

Instead, when they picked him up from Norfolk, his parents greeted him with tears and waves of unease and confusion flecked with twinges of horror that felt as white-hot pain in Kieren’s motionless chest. They tiptoed around him, pretending that nothing had happened so pitifully that it brought on a fear that nothing would ever be as it was; that he would never fulfil that need to feel himself.   
Jem’s rejection of him felt almost gratifying; as if it served as proof that something was different and therefore that something could be changed. Fixed. He needed to fix it. He feared he never would.

And then… then each layer fell away with an ease and grace that suggested they had never been. The heady passion of a kiss that made him feel both as prey and predator; a hunter caught in a cage of gently brushing fingers and lips, because that was what he wanted. The slight tickles of sensation that brought back, with every precious hug felt and loving touch accepted, the humanity that still resided within, despite having been lost without. Murmured words in an Irish brogue that made him feel alive in the little scrabbles of fingertips and intakes of breath that accompanied them. 

Within Simon’s eyes, Kieren did not find the fear that he found in his own. He didn’t find either the font of all his needs and desires. Instead he found the discovery that he was in need of nothing; that his fears were unfounded. In Simon’s eyes, in his subtle smiles, in the gentle grabbing of his fingertips at Kieren’s neck when they kissed, in his passion and his convictions, in his integrity and in his love, Kieren found that within himself, and within his unbeating heart, there was nothing broken; nothing that need be fixed.

**Author's Note:**

> *nervous face* this is the first thing i've written for this fandom, so please be nice to me ^_^


End file.
